Texas Abortion Law

 I live in Texas, and in its last session our native criminal class outdid itself in passing the abominable abortion law that went into effect this month. The legislators did not make abortion a crime subject to prosecution by officials, probably because they knew courts would not allow a law of that sort to be enforced. Instead they came up with the gimmick of making performing an abortion or helping a woman to get an abortion after about the sixth week of pregnancy a civil violation that anyone in the state can sue over and collect up to ten thousand dollars plus a cut for his lawyers. The persons doing the suing do not have to claim to have suffered any harm or even to have any connection at all to the woman or those they are suing. The scheme was that as long as it lasted this would be as effective as an ordinary prohibition but would be harder and take longer to stop in courts, because  there would have to be civil suits under it to review before anything definite could happen.  

People should oppose the law and its gimmick irrespective of their opinions on abortion. If the gimmick is permitted as a tactic, a legislature could at least temporarily get rid of almost anything  its members disapproved of  that would be impossible to ban directly  (rude political speech, private purchase of firearms, homosexual marriage, or home schooling, for   example)   by making anyone connected with the disliked activity subject to an unlimited number of lawsuits.

The five members of the supreme court who refused to block this thing for what they said were purely technical and procedural reasons should consider its substance, see the gimmick as the attack on the general constitutional protection of people’s rights that it is, and find a way to stop its present and possible future use  as soon as possible. Liberal, libertarian, and conservative anti-abortion people who have supported this law should think twice. Libertarians among them should be ashamed.

A Couple of Inconsistencies

In the public controversy and debate over abortion, many on both sides have had difficulty with consistency. For example, many religious  opponents of abortion believe that aborting a fetus at any stage is an  act of  forestalling  a soul's  chance to develop as God intended all souls to do. However since millions of spontaneous abortions of fetuses occur each year though natural miscarriages, this belief cannot be reconciled with their other belief in  intelligent design by a benevolent deity, one who could have designed things so as to preclude miscarriages but did not.  

On the other side, leftists proponents of abortion face a fundamental difficulty in the fact that they favor a nearly libertarian freedom of choice in regard to abortion and a regime of paternalistic control and regimentation in almost everything else, making  the impossible claim that  this one area of human action is special and deserving of liberty while most others are not. A recent example illustrates this inconsistency well. Conservatives in some states have passed bills requiring those performing abortions to have admission privileges at  a nearby hospital, claiming to do so in the interest of safety. Libertarians who believe people should be free to select any sort of  treatment they want from anyone willing  to provide it  have no difficulty opposing these laws, but leftists who support almost every other sort of so-called safety rule and regulation - no matter how authoritarian, intrusive, foolish, or inconvenient – cannot do so consistently. It is just hard to argue that a woman should be completely free to decide  from whom to have an abortion but not to decide how large a Coca Cola she wants to drink.

These are only a couple of obvious examples. There are others as well. Of course few in either group seem to notice or worry about such inconsistencies or to attempt to develop more cogent arguments, but they are interesting  to an outside observer and perhaps a challenge to do a better job of thinking things through regardless of what opinions one holds on the question.  

The Election

Some thoughts about yesterday’s election:

Abortion may be  the new gun control. Gun control is an article of faith among leftist Democrats. For years it was also a major part of their programs and campaigns. Then they started losing elections because of it and dropped it as a national issue, perhaps deciding pragmatically that while anyone adamantly in favor of gun control was likely to vote for them anyway, people opposed to gun control who might otherwise have voted for Democrats were being  driven to the Republicans. That seems to be where the Republicans are on abortion.  They lost two senate races yesterday in Indiana and Missouri that should have been easy victories because of dogmatic yahoo-ish statements by their candidates about abortion. The question could also have been a factor in Romney’s losing among women in several states where the overall totals were close and a better showing among women would have made Romney the winner.  It may be time to for the Republicans to realize  that they are not winning with this and drop opposition to abortion as a national issue. (They could of course still use it as a local issue in places where it is popular, just as the Democrats have done with gun control.)

I hoped Romney would win and thought he would win, though realizing that the issue was much in doubt.  However I am not surprised that I was wrong. Defeating an incumbent president is very difficult in this country. Since 1900 there have been only two incumbent, elected presidents who lost elections in which there was not a strong third party candidate - Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter.  While the country is not in good shape just now, it is in nowhere near the bad shape it was in in 1932 or 1980.  In the same period, all former vice presidents who had assumed the presidency after the death of a president and then sought re-election won.  Also since World War II, the Republicans and Democrats have alternated holding  the presidency in eight year intervals every time but one (Carter’s loss in 1980).

Still I hoped that  the difficulties with the economy, coupled with Obama’s execrable views, unpopular policies, and unpleasant personality would allow a Romney to pull it off. Well they didn't, and the country will suffer for that failure.  But the man is not really a Duce or a Generalissimo for life with unlimited powers. He only behaves as though he wishes he were. We can hope that a Republican house and an alert citizenry can keep the damage to a repairable level.